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Been busy for a while and was distracted by other facets of life. Signed in today was reading some of the posts to see if anything major or interesting has happened and not much has changed as I expected (no offence). So it seems no harm there in being temporarily gone.

Now as I was reading some of the posts and a reply to my "Everything is Assumed" thread I noticed I had been down rep to -6 so I checked the Binary Revolution forum index page where it has a list of where you were down repped and which it was in like each thread over a long past with no replies as to why...I in some ways don't care but was wondering has another spam bot got lose or some dumb-ass, or did I make a thread that offended some community and they say it and one of them joined and down repped me for that. Anyway I was also wondering if this had happened to anyone else as well.

Hey Samo! Good to hear from you again. Sorry to give you a wall of text here, there's really no concise way to explain this.

In short, if you want to explore a long distance tandem, your best bet is to use a PIC code. There's a very simple trick that lets you push any destination you want directly into the tandem. We'll use Worldcom as an example, since it works from basically anywhere in the United States. Ready? Dial 101-0555. That's it; no zero, nothing. What you get next is a dialtone straight from the tandem. In the case of the ex-Worldcom tandems, it's not quite as fun as it could be; it wants an authorization code a-la 950 calling card.

That's from a DMS (500, I think) owned by Integra, one of the local CLECs. Most long distance tandems (AT&T's aside - we'll get into that in a bit) don't like terminating toll-free calls, so you'll end up getting weird messages that you'll never be able to hear normally unless your switch loses it's mind. What's so great about this is you're completely free from the dialing restrictions of a normal end office. Want to dial an NXX starting with 1 or 0? A code starting with #? *? There's nothing standing in your way. Sprint in particular stuck a speed dial function on their tandem for some weird reason in the #xx range. #99+anything seems to be it's own little exception - it'll wait for a very large amount of digits before eventually giving you a generic CBCAE recording. This might indicate they're hiding something else here.

There's one downside to this technique; if you're not subscribed to a carrier, they won't always let you play with the tandem. ex-MCI (0222) and Sprint are a couple good examples of this, but Sprint will give you a cool message as a consolation prize. Depending on your area, you might have better luck too. For example, the Qwest long distance network has a combination of DMS-250 and Sonus switches.

Sonus isn't fond of letting people have fun on the phone, so you'll just get a generic error recording. If you encounter Global Crossing's Sonus switches, you won't even get a custom recording, you'll get the Sonus stock one. It's worth a laugh if you ever hear it. It's under three seconds, and was clearly made last minute by an engineer.

Speaking of Global Crossing, like MCI/0222, they have a number of Alcatel DEX switches floating around. Dialing 101-0444 will just get you an error, though. The solution? 950-1044! What dialplan they're using is absolutely beyond me, though, so you're on your own there. There's suggestions - like 800-223-1104 (but only without a 1) going to an invalid code recording that suggest it might be for calling card use, but most things I can think to try just go to a CBCAD.

And then we come to AT&T's 0288 network. I'll level with you, this is something I haven't figured out at all. Whenever I've been fortunate to get a dialtone back, it's always been from one of their 5ESS toll tandems. If there's such thing as a pushy phone switch, this is it. It'll let you know right away if it thinks you're doing something wrong. And putting a 1 in front of your destination number is wrong. I haven't had time or an opportunity to just sit down and investigate this, but what I do know is it's unique from a lot of other switches. For one, it'll terminate toll-free calls, but only on specific carriers. I believe just AT&T and Global Crossing toll-frees. Sometimes, it gets a little weirder - like, if you dial 800-244-1111, you'll get a recording from a McLeodUSA DMS. What this means I'm not sure exactly, but my guess is since the 5E toll tandems are responsible for lending a hand in connecting toll-frees, they'll store translations for those toll-frees. If it happens to have one - outdated or not, it'll just use that instead of doing an SMS-800 dip.

Also of note on the AT&T tandems is the 600 NPA. Instead of just intercepting it like any invalid NPA, it'll pass this onto the 4ESS. This might indicate AT&T stashed something in there.

As for your question - is SS7 relevant to phreaks?

Absolutely. The very core practice of phreaking - introducing unorthodox input into the phone network - is fair game to everything, in or out of the speech channel. In the past, we've proved ISDN cause codes can trigger calls to take a different route, and it's been demonstrated that originating a ghost call (in short, an ANI fail on steroids - a call originated with no field other than the destination number) can be enough trouble that phone companies would probably scratch their heads as to whom they should send the bill to. It's understandable that figuring these things out is a challenge, but if anything, that should be a motivator. We're phone phreaks, we've got the resourcefulness to identify a piece of telco hardware by nothing more than vague sounds, and have fun in the process. This should be a reminder that there's always more to explore, and always another limit to break.

Not to stir shit up, but I certainly agree that this forum shouldn't be a place where fake accounts come along and post allegations which result in people being terminated from their employment.

If "unlucky" was indeed the victim of a violation of his privacy by an employee of trapcall/spoofcard then he should have contacted them.

Also, if Lucky was fired without any evidence of a particular account being accessed by an employee, then he worked for a piece of shit company.

If I were a mod, i would have deleted this thread because even if the allegations were true, there was not a shred of evidence provided, and I do not believe that this is a place for such things. perhaps if "unlucky" simply voiced a concern over the privacy expectations when dealing with a particular service, but he didn't - he made an accusation directed at one man, without anything to back it up.

SCO doesn't own UNIX, at least not yet. The actual "ownership" and copyright to UNIX is a very complicated issue. All this court decision did was "reverse material aspects" of the earlier verdict from 2007 that found Novell to be the rightful copyright owner. Now there's going to be yet another trial case to determine whether SCO does in fact own the copyright.

I don't think anybody seriously gives a shit about System V UNIX, UnixWare or any of SCO's other crappy, outdated products.

For years, SCO has been bitching that Linux infringes on a copyright for the original UNIX code that it assumes it holds. They have sued companies like IBMand Novell which produce Linux-based software and distribute Linux as an OEM OS. They have disseminated propaganda to Linux users, accusing them of copyright infringement and alleging they could be liable for damages simply by running Linux. They have sued their own (former) customers who switched from using their products to using Linux. SCO is also known to have received financial backing from other, far more powerful interests whose goal is to ruin the open source software movement by any means possible. At this point, SCO clearly has nothing to lose, and Microsoft doesn't have to dirty their hands or risk hurting their own public image by attacking open source developers in court. Microsoft can just sit back and bash the OSS movement in the press, allege IP infringements, negotiate cross-licensing agreements and provide financial support to companies like SCO to file anti-OSS suits.

This may not be a potent threat to the very existence of Linux, but it could definitely harm Linux in the business market and lead to some very bad precedents regarding OSS and software copyright/patents in general.

BTW, I'm not the one who voted down your post. It's an interesting bit of news on a case I haven't really followed in awhile. Thanks for posting it.

The above is the 'offical' Postal Regulation for an IBI or Information Based Indicia. All this information is contained in the 2-D barcode to the upper left of a piece of metered mail. Look at some of your junk mail and it will be very clear what I mean. It's that box that looks like Lattera's avatar. The column that says barcode are all of the data items in that 2-D barcode that I'm talking about and the Human Readable is what you can decipher when you look at it...date, time, etc.

The information is digitally signed so that when the Post Office reads the mail it can be fairly certain that it came from a particular licensed meter.

What's crazy is that the meter internally communicates with 'itself' using an asymetric key system...public/private. That is the meter contains a postal security device which is tamper resistant (of course resistance is a relative term) that sends out commands to create and sign the indicia with all the signals being encrypted. Think of it like an HTTPS setup for internal communications or more appropriately like each command being digitally signed. Digital signatures use the public/private key system so this is closer to what is happening.

The whole postage meter industry is so wacky. What I mean is that to actually attack the meter directly is incredibly hard but not impossible;however, there are far easier ways to 'hack' a meter. The meter itself and access thereof is fairly easy due to primitive security. If you have physical control of a meter and a system that can interface with it you can do pretty much whatever you want. But not to be too much of a worry wort...printing postage is printing money; stamps are a legal form of tender so if you play games with this stuff the penalties are insanely harsh because of that. I know some smartass is saying to himself, "Oh then I can use it to buy my groceries?" Not exactly...unclaimed stamps can and must be refunded by the post office. If you show up with a stamp that is legally yours or if you can 'somehow' prove that that is a stamp of yours the post office refunds the amount on the stamp. Of course it isn't an immediate refund. You can't just show up with a meter label for a hundred bucks and walk away with a c-note.

Ohm, you obviously get off on policing binrev. Seriously, I've seen you crush countless topics with your sense of superior morality. The only thing that impresses me about you is that you always find some way to condescend. You've got a real talent.

As for XP, it was received pretty badly at first. Pre-SP1, XP was quite buggy. Also, for the time it was resource heavy, so a lot of people complained they couldn't run it on their current machines. I always got a chuckle when people bashed Vista, yet praised XP which had similar problems at the start. Of course people were willing to bite the bullet since the alternative was Windows 98 (or for the enlightened few, Windows 2000). Now, you have XP which works and is stable, so you can sit back and poo Vista all you want.

I've also had no problems with Vista. If you have a fast enough machine, there's just not much to complain about. It works, what more do you want?

404-289-9533 - AIS report on a 1AESS. What's amazing about this is you can hear pretty distinct crosstalk from other calls 1/3 times. Call in at different times of the day, it's really fun. During the day you hear lots of voices, but towards midnight to 4 AM or so, you start to hear more and more modems and other weird automated things. Some of which have very decodable DTMF if you're so inclined. Just remember that only one person at a time can get this noisy trunk.

I'm new on the phreaking scene, so bear with me. Anyways, I was looking through the forum and saw a list of remaining 1AESS switches and noticed that there is one in my city. I dug deeper and found out that it happens to serve my POTS line (what were the odds!). In short I would like to know if there is anything special I can do with the beast.

I am a phreaker. I phreak. Sometimes I phreak with phreaking tools, but I don't phreak systems. That would be weird. "To phreak" is an intransitive verb, denoting an activity but does not take a direct object.

I remember my father had an analog answering machine in the 80's. It came with a little back box about the size of a small pack of smokes with a button. You held the button up to the phone and it would control the our home answering machine.

It had different beep combinations to rewind, playback, play first messages, etc.. You;d need to consult an owner's manual for each device I think.

It's easy to stop a system and mess with memory when it's designed for it. Many embedded systems support a ROM monitor that would allow such operation. Finding a way to jam bytes into memory and jump to them is a large part of remote exploitation.